


Carry

by EllenD



Series: Levi Mpreg [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Blood, Canonical Character Death, Cults, Kidnapping, M/M, Pregnancy, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-08-29 19:41:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16750375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllenD/pseuds/EllenD
Summary: This is a sequel to the one-shot Levi Mpreg fic: Life in Unexpected Places. Erwin previously orders Levi to terminate an unplanned pregnancy. This is what happens in the aftermath.





	1. Head and Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoy this sequel! No copyright infringement intended.

It was Spring and Erwin was carrying the dead back to the Walls.

The Survey Corps’ expedition had ended with minimal casualties. It would have scraped by as a success, except that they’d come back without Captain Levi. Which made it a disaster. If the Survey Corps was Humanity’s spear, then Levi was the spearhead that had gotten snapped off.

Erwin, riding at the head of the formation, received the news secondhand, lobbed at him from three different directions like an unfair game of catch.

Corporal Swan, greasy hair and greasy nose, had been the only one to see it happen: the puff of acrid smoke, the gas cannister backfiring and exploding sideways into Levi’s body instead of shooting out the grapple. His cry – _Captain, look out!_ – had alerted Privates Kirk and Shaw in time to see Levi falling, arm clutched to his abdomen, a thread of blood flying from his mouth, the liquid so dark it was almost purple, a drunkard spitting up wine, those eyes widened in shock and disbelief, falling and falling as Swan rappelled towards him, hand outstretched but too late.

“Did you try to recover him?” said Erwin, the sides of his face hot with rushing blood.

Then the stream of excuses, torn ragged by the wind as they galloped: they had been too far away, titans had been closing in, the fall was from too high up and there was no way the captain could have made it, it had been too late, it had been too late, _it had been too late_.

“Did you see him fall?”

Kirk, “Yes, Commander.”

Shaw, “With my own eyes.”

Swan, “I tried to grab him, he was just out of reach.”

“Did you see him _hit the ground_?”  

Kirk, “I was too far away by then. And there was a titan…”

Shaw, “I thought I heard an impact… He might have hit the ground, or maybe a branch.”

Swan, “I did see it. I didn’t see him move again. I’m… sorry, Commander. It was too late.”

“Are you _certain_?”

“Yes.” Full of regret.

“And the captain’s body?”

“Like we said, there were titans closing in. If the fall hadn’t killed him, well…”

Erwin snapped out, “List him among the missing. Make for the Wall.”

Private Shaw shuddered a little before turning her face away. The Missing were simply the Dead that were never recovered.

 

It may have seemed cold, but those momentary hesitations – _are you certain?_ – were far more than Erwin had ever given to the dead.

It was hard, impossible even, for him to picture it. Levi falling, Levi dying, those eyes going blank, his brilliant, indomitable, infuriating lover conquered by faulty equipment and gravity, left to be stomped into the mud by titans’ feet, so far away from the sky he loved. So far away from Erwin.

X

It was a dying Autumn, on its way to winter, and Hange was carrying an armful of documents. She was rushing that morning, scattering people and papers alike on her way to Erwin’s office, stray scraps of note-scrawled parchment flying from her pile like windswept leaves, Moblit squawking as he snatched them out of the air. Good ol’ Moblit.

“Section Commander, you need to take a break. It’s been 30 hours since you last slept and you’ve eaten nothing but tea for just as long!”

“Wow, I’ve been taking better care of myself than usual!” Hange said cheerfully. She turned a sharp corner, startling a pair of cadets, leaving them in the dust by the time they’d snapped a salute. “And you don’t eat tea, Moblit, you drink it.”

“ _I_ drink it,” Moblit mumbled under his breath. “You literally eat it, leaves and all.”

A habit she’d picked up since childhood from some great aunt or other. For luck. When you fought titans, you could always use luck.

Levi had been disgusted by it.

She blew past the courtyard, scattering birds now too, her thoughts moving quicker than her feet. Moblit rushed ahead and threw open the doors to the main hall before she plowed into them. She flew up a flight of stairs, skirted a training classroom, and nearly tripped into Erwin’s office when her heel caught the edge of the carpet.

“Good morning, Commander!”

“Hange,” Erwin greeted coolly from his desk. It almost made her stop in her tracks. He’d always been cool, _dignified_ , military to the core. But lately he’d been inhumanly cold, a vicious yet brittle dead-of-winter kind of cold. Hearing him speak, it was like she swallowed ice water and it went straight to her belly.

No matter. “Did you get my notes?”

“Yes.” He set his pen down and ruffled a nearby stack of files, searching for the one that was hers, knocking some of them askew. His empty uniform sleeve was neatly pinned up today. She wondered who did it for him. (It used to be Levi.) She had trouble imagining him doing it himself, using his teeth to hold the sleeve while pinning it one-handed. “I have reservations about some of your new proposals, Hange. And the equipment you’re requisitioning, I’m not sure it’s in our best interests…”

“Oh, but they’re absolutely crucial! If you read the third page of my proposal, there’s a very detailed design sketch and a catalogue of uses for how the weapons can be modified for fighting and restraining titans. Here, I’ll show you.” She leaned in and froze, her voice cracking on the last word.

In the pile of files he’d knocked askew, one of them was Levi’s personnel file. It wasn’t buried at the bottom. It was on top, probably still warm from his hand. The spine of the folder was creased and pulpy. He hadn’t just been reading it. He’d been reading it _right then_ , which meant he’d been reading it over and over, obsessively.

She flicked her eyes back to Erwin, saw that he was staring at her like she had no business being there.

“Peeking’s not polite, Section Commander,” he said. His eyes were like the skin of ice over a frozen-over pond. Cold but brittle, like he was on the verge of cracking.

“Oh, Erwin,” she sighed. “It’s been months.”

“So it has.”

“You’re still having him listed as Missing?”

“He is. Still missing.”

“We both know you don’t believe that.”

“If I didn’t witness it with my own eyes…”

“Why are you doing this? It’s torture.”

“He was – _is –_ Humanity’s Strongest. It’s good for morale if there’s still hope he’s alive.”

“You know what’s bad for morale?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

“This… this _half-life_ you’re giving him!”

“You’re out of line, _Section Commander_!”

Both their voices had risen without them realizing. Erwin had stood up, towering over Hange, her not cowed in the least. Moblit was dancing from foot to foot, stammering out a nervous protest, but he was cut off.

“Commander, I know how much he meant to you.”

“This isn’t a personal matter. I know my boundaries.”

“He meant a lot to me too. He was one of my closest comrades, much more than a colleague. He was like a brother to me, a stubborn, filthy-mouthed, antagonizing brother with a tea obsession and a bizarre refusal to let me take a toenail sample. Who saves my life on a regular basis. But I’ve grieved. You… you won’t even let there be a funeral. You still have his belongings hanging in a locker. His gloves are still on a hook in the stables.”

“If you’re implying that I’m emotionally compromised-”

“I’m not saying that-”

“-that I’m not fit to lead-”

“Erwin…”

“-then you can file a formal complaint with Commander Pixis and have me strung up for-”

“He’s _gone_!”

Her voice crackled in the air, echoey and sizzling, a flare gun gone off too close. She’d hit the desk with both fists for good measure, startling all of them including herself.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” she panted. Absently, she started straightening things up, a sheaf of papers, a deck of notecards, a pot of ink. “But it needs to be said. You _yourself_ put a ban on search and rescue parties. _Months_ ago. Admit it. You’ve given up. You know it and I know it. He’s not missing. He’s not coming back.”

He lowered his eyes. Tapped a fingernail on the edge of his desk. Perfectly serene for anyone else, but for him, it was downright twitchy. “It is a fact,” he said slowly, “a factual _truth_ , that Captain Levi is missing.”

She stared at him a moment, before huffing, “Fine.” She plucked a rolled map off a nearby stand and slapped it down on his desk, unfurling it carelessly over everything else. “Then let’s put an end to it. Let’s _finish_ it. Put a period on this sentence.” She scanned the map with squinted eyes then stabbed at a spot with her finger. “There. Cochem village. Horrible place, mostly slums. Our final lead. The last search party focused on the southernmost areas of the Wall and turned up nothing months ago. Not even… remains.” It was the delicate way to say _titan vomit_.

The well-worn paper hissed as she drew her finger across it. “But look here. Cave formations, not too far from where Levi reportedly fell. If he was able to survive, if he was able to somehow get to the caves for shelter, then his next stop could be further north than we’d expected, to Cochem.”

“You’re grasping at straws.”

“I know I am, but hear me out. Even if it’s his _remains_ we’re recovering, even if he didn’t survive for long afterwards, but if he made it somewhere safe, even momentarily, it’s worth a shot to check it out.”

“No.”

“Authorize it. Just me and my squad, a quick recon mission.”

 “No more search parties.”

“Erwin, listen to me, this is-”

“I won’t allow it!” he suddenly shouted.

Moblit gasped and jumped behind her. She was startled too, but not by Erwin’s raised voice. A rifle could go off next to her ear and she wouldn’t be startled, so long as her focus was elsewhere. And she was focusing on Erwin’s face, his eyes. His teeth were clenched, but not in anger, not really. She knew him better than most, knew that his face told lies as well as truths, and she knew that his true expression was dangerously close to fear.

“You won’t… allow it?” she echoed.

“Hange…”

 

“Let me get this straight, you don’t _want_ to find out once and for all if Levi is missing or dead?”

He shook his head, a hard jerk to the left. Then said calmly, too calmly, “I have to consider the needs of the Corps – and Humanity itself – as a whole, and this is not a proper allocation of resources.”

“No… no, that’s not it,” she muttered, rubbing her fingers together, her eyes darting from side to side, talking to no one in particular. “That’s not it at all. You’re refusing because… you don’t want to search for him. You don’t want to find him. Because you know he’s dead and there’s nothing to find? And yet you’re here pining over his file, refusing to actually admit he’s dead.”

She shook her head, her tone accusatory. “You’re either in some very strange form of denial or there’s something you know that you’re not telling me.”

His eyes were closed, pinched tightly at the corners, a deep furrow between his brows. He looked more defeated than angry.

“Well, what is it?!” she nearly shrieked. “Tell me the truth, Commander, because I don’t like what my imagination is coming up with!”

He gave her a long, level stare, then snapped out, “Berner, please give us a moment.”  

“You can talk in front of Moblit, he’s perfectly safe-”

“And close the door behind you.”

Moblit stammered out a “Yes, sir!” and left like he was being chased.

Erwin stared at the closed door for a moment’s silence, refusing to look at her, before turning to the window, putting a steadying hand on the back of his chair.

“Erwin?” she prompted, gently this time. She was rattled and could tell that he was too. “Please.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” he spoke to the curtain sash. “About his… condition.”

“Y-you mean about the baby?” His shoulders straightened slightly at the word _baby,_ his version of a pained flinch. “Yes. Yes, I knew. He got the surgery to terminate it, didn’t he? I’m sorry.”

Erwin gestured vaguely, tiredly, to Levi’s personnel file. “It was only a few days before the expedition. I ordered him to do it. To make the appointment.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself…”

 “After he went missing, I pulled his personnel file. His medical file. There was no record of an abortion.”

Hange opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Gulped some air, and said slowly, like she was placating a child, “Erwin, the doctor probably didn’t feel comfortable putting that down in official records.”

Erwin shook his head, another hard, uncharacteristic jerk to the left. “Not only that. I talked to the doctor. That specific surgeon, who performs that specific type of operation. He looked surprised. Shocked. Thought I was joking at first. He said that Levi never even made an appointment.”

Hange could feel sweat prickling under her arms, behind her neck. Her stomach churned painfully in sympathy. _You poor man_. “It was probably a matter of privacy. Doctors are obligated to keep certain things confidential.”

“There is no confidentiality where duty is concerned,” Erwin said harshly. “He was either telling the truth, or he was such a good liar that even I was fooled. Levi never got the surgery. He disobeyed a direct command.”

Hange laughed nervously. “Hey, now. S-so what are you saying?”

“He knew I’d never allow him to continue serving if he stayed pregnant. He knew he was committing a court martial offence by disobeying.”

“So _what_? You’re saying that out of fear, he’s _hiding_ somewhere out there, still carrying your child?”

“I’m saying he kept fastidious care of his equipment. I’m saying he’s survived much worse than a simple fall. I’m saying… maybe he did fall but he didn’t die. Maybe he survived and he doesn’t want to be found.”  

There was a loaded silence between them. She could read his thoughts.  _Maybe my child is still..._

Her throat itched. She felt dizzy all of a sudden. _I knew I should have eaten something_.

Erwin Smith may be brilliant, but he wasn’t a woman. He didn’t know how _delicate_ , how _private_ , certain things were. How humiliating it was to have them known. He didn’t know the procedures that went on in secret, the things whispered among sisters only, things medically filed under _torn ligaments_ and _contusions_ that were actually euphemisms for something else, how doctors can be convinced – if they were sympathetic – or bribed – if they were unsympathetic – to turn their heads and pretend not to see. He looked at Levi’s file exactly as it was written: in black and white. And he thought it was proof.  

Hange slumped down into a nearby chair, legs splayed, head in hands. She was dreadfully sad. _You poor, poor man_. She found herself looking down at her hands, rubbing the fingertips together. They were stained reddish with iron salts. Her nails were filthy. “Poor Moblit worries about me,” she mused. “I think the kid’s in love with me.”

She looked up at Erwin, who was looking back at her sideways, askance. “You know, there’s a children’s story about a potion that can cure all diseases, including death? The Elixir of Life. It’s tantalizing, isn’t it?”

He looked away. “You don’t believe me,” he said flatly.

“I… love my comrades like my own family. I’ve watched more of them die than I can count. I’m a scientist at heart, you know that. I know there is nothing that can cure death. Oh yes, you can resuscitate someone if you’re fast enough. But those that have actually died, truly _died_ … there’s no cure for that. It’s unnatural. My head knows that. And yet, I see the Titans’ regenerative power – as unnatural as death spun backwards – and my heart soars. And I experiment. Over and over. I cut and I burn. I reach and I reach for this supposed Elixir of Life. Something that can bring the dead back. It’s foolish, though. My heart wants desperately what my head already knows is impossible.”

She stood, straightening her uniform. Her shirt was wrinkled underneath her jacket. There was a burn mark on her cuff. She hasn’t washed in forever and she could feel the bile stirring in her empty stomach. “The head and the heart are two separate things, Erwin. Sometimes, they can get… confused. Even for me. Even for you.”

He was staring out the window, to the training yard. She walked towards him, quietly, gentle-like, and touched his shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry. I wish it wasn’t true, for my own sake, for your sake, for Humanity’s sake, but he’s gone. My head knows it. My heart, well, it struggles but it accepts it. You need to accept it, Erwin. Put him to rest.”

He didn’t answer her. She left him alone, staring out at the training yard, where the dead things – dried leaves and fallen acorns and old hay – were being swept up in the wind.

X

It was nighttime, a miserably cold, bone aching, early winter night, and Erwin was in pain.

He couldn’t sleep, so he tried to work. He couldn’t work, so he tried pacing. That only jarred his arm, making the spasms worse. He sat on the edge of his bed, panting, sweat pouring off him, clutching at his mutilated limb.

So he was awake when the alarm bell started ringing. He was awake and dressed by the time the shouts reached the barracks ears.

He strode out into the hallway, his pain forgotten.

“What is it?” he asked a passing guardsman.

“Commander,” gasped the man, who was pale and wide-eyed. “It’s… it’s the Captain!”

“The Captain? What do you mean?”

“C-Captain Levi, sir!”

Erwin felt the pain in his arm flare up again, sharp as a blade. “Alive? Dead?”

The man’s eyes were wide, not with hope, not with sadness, but with pure blank horror. Erwin saw that there was a splat of blood on his hand, a smear of it down the front of his shirt. “The captain!” he moaned through his teeth, which were chattering. “He’s-!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading this story! And for reading the previous one, I'm assuming! Please feedback and let me know what you think!


	2. Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Levi's been the whole time...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please PLEASE be aware of the tags! While I still hope you'll read it anyway, there IS some disturbing imagery and abuse/violence of a sexual nature. This chapter isn't essential to the rest of the story if you do skip it. I've separated the only "sexual violence" part of the story into its own chapter for this reason. Please proceed with caution!

Levi had seven rusty nails hidden behind a loose brick. Seven sharp little weapons, plus the brick itself, which could be used to bash the soft part of Old Letch’s head.

To reach it, he had to stretch his right hand as far as the shackle would allow, past the headboard where the chain was looped twice, and remove the brick with his fingertips, carefully, always carefully or else it would slip and fall.

He thought of those seven little nails as the door to his prison, a windowless bare brick room somewhere underground – he knew it was underground because that dank smell was unforgettable – and the bed he was kept chained to, opened. It was a good chunky door, solid-looking with metal hinges, and it always took an eternity to unlock and unlatch and unhook. Every visit started with a cacophony outside, _bang, rattle, click, slide_ , him listening in half-dread, half-boredom, for the noise to end and the door to open to either Old Letch or the doctor.

It was Old Letch this time. He was a fleshy, squinty-eyed man with tight curls and chubby cheeks that turned rosy when he was aroused. He wore the gold bands and black silk of a leader of the Wall Cult. The first time, looming over Levi, he’d introduced himself as Pastor Karl. In the following months, while Levi burgeoned with child, he’d changed from that to Minister Karl, to Pastor Keith, to Friar Keith, to Father Kristof. He could never get his own false identities straight. Levi just referred to him as Old Letch.

“And how is our Miracle Child today?” Old Letch greeted him, in that wet, slurpy voice he always had. He closed the door behind him, nudging it shut with a plump behind, and strode over to the bed, starting to fiddle with Levi’s ankle, the edge of a blanket, his hair. His hands were cold and invasive as always. “Not up to talking, huh?”

 _Bastard._ Not that he could. They’d left the gag in, a strip of metal across his teeth fastened to leather straps around his head, the edges digging deep into his mouth, bruising his cheeks. When he’d first been brought here, he’d chewed the windpipe out of the first man who’d touched him. They’d learned their lesson since then.

Levi glared and thought hard about those seven nails.

_Patient, be patient._

He resisted the urge to flinch as Old Letch flipped the blanket off, exposing Levi, completely naked with all four limbs chained to the heavy tree trunk posts of the bed. A sharp, wet intake of air, a fleshy gulp, and that bastard’s cheeks grew plump and rosy as he took in Levi’s pale skin, the stick-skinny limbs, the swollen belly and hardening nipples. “The sins of the father pass down to the son,” the cultist murmured, breathing hard, his constant mantra. “Sin casts long shadows. The shadows of sin are long and far. The sins of the father pass down to the son…”

_Patience…_

No, not the nails. The nails were too short. A puncture wound, a little thorny stab, would be too little, too easy to rear back from, a hand clapped to the wound, blubbering for help while dancing out of reach.

So he wouldn’t go for the nails. Levi needed to strike a death blow, today of all days. Because Old Letch had the keys dangling from his waist. He could hear the telltale _clink_ as the man sat on the bed, the mattress dipping, forcing Levi to slide closer. Usually, he left the keys on a hook by the door, unreachable, even if Levi killed him. Today was the day he was careless. “Sin casts long shadows…”

Levi curled away instinctively, knees pressing together, when Old Letch tried to reach between his legs.

“Don’t worry, Lovely, my hands are clean,” Old Letch panted. “I’m just checking on the baby.”

_Be patient, be patient. Let him do what he wants… for now._

And Levi closed his eyes, fighting not to fight, before letting the man part his thighs, a knuckley finger seeking out the hidden opening, the sensitive birth canal. He gasped when he felt the intrusion, back arching against the weight of the baby, almost lashing out then and there.

It took a special discipline (and _patience,_ most of all) to not lash out, to not bite and latch on like a dog, snarling, at the first piece of flesh within reach. To wait, even as he was prodded and poked, for the jugular to present itself. Levi had never been good at that. He was used to reacting. But he’d learned during these long, yawing months. Painfully.

“Very good, very good,” Old Letch was cooing, smiling delightedly when Levi grunted around his gag as he slipped in another finger. Levi writhed a little, trembling, at the sweet soreness between his legs. He willed the baby inside him to keep sleeping, to not wake up.  

“You’re doing very well.” Old Letch touched the dome of Levi’s belly with his other hand while curling the fingers inside him, like a farmer checking a heifer. “The doctor’s not in today. I’ll examine you as well as pray over you. My Miracle Child.”

Old Letch was breathing hard as he fondled Levi, touching his limp cock, fingering his entrance, running a hand down Levi’s thigh under the guise of checking the muscles. One hand disappeared beneath the folds of his silk robe to touch himself. “The sins of the father pass down the son. Sin casts long shadows. The shadows of sin are long and far. The sins of the father…” The words droned on, sexual and meaningless.

His usual visits would start with him “praying” and preaching something asinine, pointless, and then end with him drooling and pleasuring himself over Levi’s body, rosy cheeks and glistening eyes. Once, he’d even gone so far as to rut against Levi’s pregnant belly, cock spewing against tight hot flesh. Horrified and disgusted, Levi had thrown up after that, face pushed as far to the side of the pillow as possible.

He wondered now, as Old Letch started to stroke himself, other hand’s fingers busy between Levi’s legs, if it would be better if the bastard simply grew some balls, took his cock out, and just raped him. It would be less pathetic to watch than this petulant masturbation. The stuttered prayers. The whiny ejaculation. More importantly, a man mid-coitus was easier to kill.

“Oh, ho! I can feel you getting wet,” simpered Old Letch, his eyes round as coins, triumphant. Levi squirmed a little, letting out a few helpless mewls. Helplessness always seemed to get the bastard going. “You like this, don’t you?” he panted. His tongue was showing, pink and fat and obscene. “Not so innocent after all. The shadows of sin are long and far, long and far…”

Levi felt the baby pulse inside of him, a small beat of fury. He whimpered again, arching into Old Letch’s touch like he wanted it, while reaching slowly, slowly, for the seam of the pillowcase, where he kept it: a spoon dropped by the mute serving girl who came once a day to feed and clean him. He’d spent weeks sharpening the handle against his right shackle cuff, awkwardly in a backwards grip, hand aching from the effort, trying desperately not to snap it. Now, it was as good as a knife.

He fake-whimpered again, then slid his leg against Old Letch’s side, needy.

The cultist laughed giddily and heaved himself fully onto the bed, stretching along Levi’s naked body. The silk of his robe was cool to the touch, slightly damp with an outdoors smell. Levi wondered if it was winter outside, if it was snowing yet. Levi thought of snow, crisp and sugary, while the man pawed at him, nibbling at him, touching a swollen nipple, childishly hesitant, like he was snitching sweets. Levi mewed again, closing his eyes coyly, the flush of rage on his cheeks mistaken for a virginal blush.

“I’m going to take this off,” huffed Old Letch, reaching behind Levi’s head to undo the bit gag. “But no biting,” he threatened. “You _know_ what happens if you bite.” He twisted a nipple, _hard_ , and Levi didn’t have to pretend to gasp, the painfully sensitive bud swelling and throbbing between merciless fingers.

“ _Ngh… st… stop…”_

Old Letch pulled the gag off, tossing it carelessly aside, and Levi panted for breath, face throbbing with pain, old cuts reopening, the smile-shaped bruise purpling from ear to ear. A slick tongue lapped at his blood-cracked mouth. He let Old Letch kiss him, even nuzzling into him so the bastard could sigh in pleasure and throw his head back to reveal his exposed throat.              

“I love how small you still are,” gurgled Old Letch, running his hand up and down Levi’s body, stroking his baby bump. “You’re sweet. Lovely and sweet.” He nibbled on an ear while he found Levi’s slick birth canal once more, fingering it obscenely.

“The sins of the father pass down to the son… The sins of the father…”

Levi thought about snow and Erwin and the wings of freedom that had been ripped away from him. He thought about Titans’ teeth and the blue sky, and bloodstained military badges, the grip of sword metal in his hand.  

“Sin casts long shadows,” moaned Old Letch, his erection hard against Levi’s leg.

“Yes it does,” said Levi.

Erwin’s child flipped hatefully within him as he jammed the shiv into that pale, fleshy neck, then _sliced_.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I really hope you enjoyed (or at least endured) it! As always, please please feedback and let me know what you think! *Hugs and kisses*


	3. Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No coypright infringement intended! No profits made!

It was all very quiet. Old Letch bled out without much noise or fuss. He didn’t even really try to staunch the flow, his left hand still between Levi’s thighs, his right twitching on the mattress, reaching for the wound but not quite getting there, indecisive, his eyes wide and hurt, like a kicked puppy. Levi almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

The blood oozed slowly at first, syrupy, but then started spurting out in pulses as the man’s heart quickened, splashing the sheets, the chains, Levi’s hair, his face, a torrent of stinking red, which eventually slowed and slowed and stopped, like a tap being turned off.

It was an awkward, sticky job getting the keys from the folds of Old Letch’s robe, then unlocking the first shackle one-handed. He managed it, panting through his mouth while Old Letch twitched his death throes, still looking hurt and confused. Hands and feet free, Levi heaved himself over the side of the bed and dry retched for a good minute or two.

He pushed himself off, landing on his feet, and then immediately crumpled when he tried to stand. His limbs had shriveled to kindling over the months. His bones felt like glass.

“Dammit…”

Shudders wracked his body and he felt like retching again. His sweat turned cold. Exhausted, he was tempted to just lie there, a blood-crusted lump, until someone came to inspect him, saw what he’d done, and then killed him. Or rechained him to the bed, which he’d decided was worse.

But then the baby thumped from within him, a little fist or foot, reminding him that he _couldn’t_ die. Not yet.

Groaning, he pulled himself to his feet by the edge of the mattress, then panted, waiting for his legs to stop shaking.

Old Letch was a beached mess on the bed, eyes and mouth still gaping pathetically, hand halfway to his red-slashed throat, too late, his penis flaccid against his thigh. Levi briefly considered upending the bedpan over him, but it didn’t last long. He didn’t have the energy for petty vengeance. He’d leave the desecration of the dead to time and rot.

But he did strip off Pastor Karl’s (or Keith or Kristoff or whatever) outer robe and fling it around his own shoulders, the sleeves billowing out like black wings.

He wobbled on his way to the door, veering left and right like a drunkard, catching himself on the jamb before he fell. He breathed hard, once, twice, bracing himself, then pulled it open. A maze of underground tunnels and corridors awaited him.

It was time to leave.

X

They finally found him at the altar. He heard them long before they’d arrived, two zealous young men, cultists, huffing and urgent. He didn’t bother to turn around when he heard guns quickly cocked and aimed at his back.

There was a dead woman – young, almost a girl – on the altar. He was mesmerized by her, the desiccated limbs, the lips drawn back to reveal yellowed teeth, the sunken eyes and straw-like hair. He was a child again, hugging his knees to himself as his mother dried into a husk on her bed.

“D-don’t move,” stammered one of the cultists behind him, as the other one prayed feverishly. “We… we saw what you did to Pastor Karl! You’re a monster.”

He was dripping. There was a large dish of rose petaled water near the altar, from which he’d drunk deeply. He’d then thrown the rest over himself in an attempt to wash away the blood.

He wondered then, as he held an arm protectively over his stomach, if he was meant to end up like her, the dead girl. A sacrifice. She reminded him of the dead pigeons and rabbits hung out to dry in the outlying villages. Sacrifices, left out by the superstitious and fearful, their husks rattling in the breeze like corn cobs, meant to ward off whatever evil brought the titans. Or plague. Or drought. Or deluge. Take them, and not us. Eat this, and not our children. _The sins of the father…_

Her arms were crossed over her dried, deflated breasts in death, elbows sticking out like old chicken bones. A lonely bird. Above her hung the tapestries of the Wall Cult, with holy scripture woven in. The artifacts and candles were of the Wall Cult too. It was syncretic, the Cult’s trappings and words mixed with countryside superstition.

The Underground always had a way of warping things, sound and light and the flow of water. And faith.

“There’s nowhere for you to run,” snapped the young man behind him. “ We… we’re supposed to guard you. You have to come back with us.”

It was true. He had no idea how to make it out of this particular bend of the underground. But he could hear Kenny over his right shoulder, whispering in his ear, _if you’re lost and can’t find your way out, just follow the rats_.

That’s when the screams started, from the three separate fires that Levi had set.

X

He clawed his way out of the burning tunnels like a baby clawing out of a womb, the open air hitting him like a slap in the face. He fell to his knees, coughing up smoke, and breathed deep, letting the icy winter air burn his lungs. The cold battered him, billowing the robe he’d stolen from Old Letch, freezing his otherwise naked body, but also invigorating him, strengthening him. He welcomed it. Around him were the sobbing, whimpering remains of the cult that had made it out in time. Some of them spat curses at him. Some of them wailed at him. He ignored them. His feet were on solid ground. He was breathing clean air. They, who belonged to the sticky shadows of the underground, couldn’t touch him here.

Staggering at first, he started to walk, his mind going blank. His legs carrying him back to the only home he knew and the only person he trusted. _Erwin_.

X

It was bone-cold winter, the air prickly with snow about to fall, and Hange was carrying modified vertical maneuvering gear up to the roof. Shingles clinked under her boots as she scaled the pitched decking. It was nighttime, when most of the barracks would be asleep. Whoever was unfortunate enough to be bunking below her was probably stirring in their bed, whipping covers over their heads, muttering a sleepy curse.

Moblit was scrambling after her, muffled up to the ears in wool. “Section Commander, is this really necessary?”

“What a silly question!”

Hange reached the peak of the gabled roof, planted a foot down like an explorer.

“What a perfect night!” she exclaimed.

“It’s freezing!” said Moblit, shivering.

“Exactly the point.” She rattled the equipment in her hands. “I’m testing if the new pressure seal holds up in sub-freezing temperature. If all goes well, this can even be modified to fit Model 34A. Or as I call it, the Steel-Gray Titan-Killing Guts-to-Ass Blaster!”

Moblit chuckled nervously. “Why do you call it that?”

“Because it’s gray, like steel.”

“I see…”

Hange reached into her toolbelt for a wrench, wobbled a moment before regaining her balance, then started loosening a socket. She sniffed the air. “It’s a pity we didn’t get any snow. I’d have liked to see if it’s moisture resistant.”

“Section Commander, at least wear some gloves. It’s so cold your hands are turning red.”

“It’s not that bad. The cold is _bracing_.”

“It’s miserable,” said Moblit with a sniff. His own hands were encased in mittens the size of bread rolls, even as he took notes.

“Aw, don’t you like spending time with me under the stars?”

The exposed patches of Moblit’s face glowed bright pink.

The pressure seal _snicked_ into place. Hange held the gear baby-like in her arms as she started the flow of gas. She couldn’t help but feel a murmur of sadness. She had the image of Levi perched on a balcony or rooftop, an angular shadow in the dark, face upturned to the stars.

She fingered the rubbery rim of the pressure seal. It was a belated epitaph of sorts. From Corporal Swan’s report, she’d surmised it was a faulty pressure seal that had caused Levi’s equipment to fail. Making an improved version wouldn’t help him now, but still…

“Take this down, Moblit,” she said, squinting at a battered pocketwatch. “30 seconds in, and no signs of deterioration.”

“30 seconds, got it. How long should we be testing this?”

“Eight hours, at least. And that’s stationary. Then we should test for movement.”

Moblit gave her a sickly look, but whatever complaint he was about to utter was interrupted by the shouts.

Orange torches bobbed in the distance. A lone alarm bell started ringing, a high-pitched clanging.

Far-off, in the inky mish-mash of shadows between the lookout tower and the stables, a figure was moving towards them.

She shuddered. A nightmare-memory of her childhood fluttered to the surface: a black cat with two broken hind legs crawling out of a dark alleyway. Glowing eyes, like coins held to the fire. Hurting and menacing at the same time. She could almost hear the inhuman yowl, piteous and horrifying.

Then, the figure unstuck itself from the shadows and stepped into the light. The sight made her skin prickle with gooseflesh as her mind writhed to process it: lolling head, naked blood-streaked skin, stick-like limbs and an engorged abdomen, a slash of a smile, empty traumatized eyes. A titan in miniature.

Moblit was at her shoulder, teeth chattering in either cold or fear. “Th-that’s… Captain Levi?”

She shook her head and looked again. It was. Impossible, but it was. Levi, reanimated, come back like a vengeful ghost. It wasn’t a smile on his face, but a wound, drawn from ear to ear. In a sudden movement, he flung something away from him like a half-eaten meal. It hit the ground a meter away and rolled: the unconscious form of a garrison guard.

While she strapped on the gear with shaking hands, she saw him open his mouth, once, twice, nothing coming out, then she saw his bruised lips open and mouth the word, _Erwin_. _Erwin._

And there was the Commander, running across the courtyard, already throwing off his cloak, reaching Levi in a near-skid, flinging the Wings of Freedom over his lover, catching Levi with a single arm as he collapsed, the two of them swaying together like drunk dancers.

And Hange was skidding off the rooftop herself, shooting out the grapples and stumbling into a safe landing, vaguely nothing that _oh good, the pressure seal holds up when grapples are deployed_. As she ran towards them, she thought that it had been months since Erwin smiled.

X

 _I’m pregnant_ , Levi had told him, on a sunlit afternoon months ago.

At his most indulgent ( _masochistic,_ really), Erwin had imagined baby binkies and tiny fuzzy socks, silver teaspoons of mashed peas and strolls by the river. Sun drenched days. Blue skies. (His visions of parenthood were always secondhand, borrowed from Nile.) His pragmatic mind could never make these fantasies last long. They were too juicy-bright to fit into the cruel world he knew. In them, he still had both arms and the stress lines around Levi’s eyes were gone, smoothed away.

“Levi… You’re alive… You’ve come back.”

Erwin blinked cold-air tears out of his eyes as he pulled Levi to him with his single arm. Levi, alive and still pregnant. He smelled of smoke and blood. His eyes were wide and jittery, settling on Erwin, the other survey corps members who’d crowded around them, to Hange running over, to the bright orange of the fire pit, then back to Erwin, unsure where to settle. His mouth opened once or twice, clearly trying to speak but unable, whether it was because of the cold or the smoke or some other unseen injury.

Hange reached them, all legs and arms flailing, white breath puffing. She had shrugged off her cloak as well, throwing it over Levi’s lower half. “Levi! I thought… we thought…! How?”

Levi gulped air, coughed harshly, then looked at Erwin with an intense, animal stare that was mostly white. His mouth moved again, struggling to speak, his breath coming out in a long hiss. Then managed to croak out, “…wa… whhaa…”

“Water?” said Hange, then twisted around to shout for water and medical personnel. “Make sure it’s warm!”

“The doctor’s in tonight,” said Erwin. “We’ll send someone to wake him. Have him come to-”

A hand, clawed with cold, smacked into his chest. Levi’s eyes were wide, imploring. “N-nhh...” He shook his head, a harsh jerk to the side then back again, urgent. _No_.

Erwin looked down at him, taking in red skinned feet, peels of dried blood on bare skin, wrists and ankles rubbed raw with the imprint of bindings, trying to piece together the story. That bare-fear insistence: _No._

“Hange,” he said, slipping an arm Levi’s shoulders. “Help me.”

“Huh?” She blinked at him, not comprehending.

“I can’t carry him with one arm. Help me.”

“Medical will be here soon with a stretcher. Just wait a minute.”

“No. Not to the infirmary. To my quarters.”

“What? It’ll be easier to treat him if-”

“ _Trust me_ ,” Erwin insisted.

She stared at him a moment more. “…alright.”

X

They brought him to Erwin’s private living quarters and stoked the fire until it was roasting hot in the room. They chafed Levi’s hands, tossed coals into a metal pan, wrapped that in a towel, and thrust it under Levi’s feet. They wrapped him in heated blankets, piling them on top of the blood-soaked black robe Levi was still clutching to himself. Hange stuck her head into the hall and hollered for hot water, bandages, ointments, medicine, beef tea, more towels.

Erwin hung a kettle over the fire until it seethed and mixed an old wives’ concoction of honey and ginger, then wedged the steaming cup between Levi’s chattering teeth. He managed two swallows before he vomited, bringing up bile and blood, then dry heaved miserably while Erwin rubbed his back, encouraging, not quite daring to touch his pregnant belly yet, before thrusting the cup back at him until he drank it all down.

Hange came back dragging a wood basin of hot water. “There isn’t enough for a bath yet. Let’s start with this.” They plunged Levi’s feet into basin, sponging hot water over his face, his neck, his arms and hands, until the shivering slowly subsided and his teeth stopped chattering.

“Levi,” Erwin said softly, gently, like he was calming a scared child. (In a way, he was.) “We need to have a doctor look at your wounds.”

The reaction was instantaneous. “No!” blasted out from Levi’s cracked mouth, almost a shriek. There was a sting in his arm, and Erwin looked down to see that Levi had struck him blindly with a knife he’d been hiding somewhere in the folds of his robe. Red blood bloomed from on his bicep. “Nnngh… I’ll _kill_ them. They touch me, I’ll _kill them!_ ”

“It’s alright, they won’t touch you, I won’t let them, shhhh…” Erwin soothed. “No one’s here but me and Hange. We just want to help you.” He laid a hand on Levi’s wrist, pushing down so the knife was pointed towards the floor. “Who, then? Who do you trust, without question?”

Levi shivered for a moment, his eyes wild again, jittery, before refocusing. He touched Erwin’s chest with his claw of a hand, and rasped, “You.”

“Me,” Erwin confirmed. “Who else?”

 “F-four eye…” his breath ended on a long hiss. Then, “N-not her p-puppy.”

“Hange but not Moblit,” said Erwin, with a wry smile. “I can personally vouch for him, but it’s your choice.”

Levi made tapping motion towards his own chest, his mouth working but unable to find the words. _Mine_.

“Your own squad?” Erwin asked, then got a nod. “Alright then. Just us. No one else will touch you. I swear it.”

Levi exhaled shrilly, like he was releasing steam and finally let himself slump backwards into Erwin’s easy chair, head lolling to the side, unconscious.

X

It was near dawn when everything finally settled down, Levi put to bed, sponged and greased and stinging from medicine, dead to the world. The sky just turning gray as Hange made her way to Erwin’s office, nerves frayed and crackling.

The commander was sitting at his desk, slumped forwards, a loop of hair falling onto his forehead in disarray. He looked exhausted as she felt.

“Are you alright?” she asked, indicating a wound on his arm.

He looked distractedly down at it. “It’s nothing. He lashed out.”

She pulled a chair over. Pulled a roll of bandages from her pocket, then started to clean and bandage the wound.

“Hange,” he said, after she’d finished and they’d sat in silence for a few long moments, him staring at the floor and her staring at him. “If you heard a story… if you heard about something happening, something you didn’t witness for yourself… how many people would you need to corroborate it before you believed, truly believed?”

“What?” she said flatly, her voice sluggish.

“You’re a scientist, right? You experiment. If you found something… some laboratory result you weren’t expecting, you’d repeat the process, right? Trials. At least twice, to replicate the same result.”

“What. Are you getting at. Erwin?”

He sighed deeply. His whole body seemed to droop towards the floorboards. “He wasn’t asking for water,” he said, looking at nothing, unfocused. “He was trying to say _Swan_.”

A knock startled her, made her jump in her chair. 

“Come in,” Erwin called out wearily.

The door opened to reveal Sasha Braus, who saluted primly. “You asked to see me, Commander?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re attending to Captain Levi, right? How is he?”

“Still out cold, sir.”

“Who’s guarding the room now?”

“Mikasa and Connie, sir.”

“Good,” he said, nodding. Then glanced at Hange. “I’d like you to tell Section Commander Hange what you told me a few months ago. After the springtime expedition. About Captain Levi.”

Sasha flicked her eyes from the Commander to Hange, nervous.

“Go ahead, Sasha,” urged Hange, about to crawl out of her skin. “What’s this about?”

The girl gulped a bit, looking blankly forwards as she spoke. “We-ell… What happened was…  It was just after we’d stopped for the first time to rest the horses. I was leading my horse to the water to drink, and I saw Captain Levi by the trees. Being sick.”

“You mean vomiting?”

“Y-yeah. I asked him if he was alright. He brushed me off, told me to stay on lookout duty. I wasn’t even _on_ lookout duty. And he looked bad, all pale and sick, so I asked him if he needed any help.”

Hange could see it in her mind’s eye, Levi hunched over and wobbly, hand on a tree trunk, a splat of sickly-sweet regurgitated porridge near his boots. Gray-faced and pissy. “And what did he say?”

“He said not to bother. That it was something the doctor should have taken care of days ago. But the doctor couldn’t do it, didn’t have the right medicines at the time or something. So, the Captain was stuck with it. The sickness, I mean.” She gulped again, looking like she’d rather be elsewhere. “Is that all, Commander sir?”

Erwin nodded, gave her a vaguely dismissive hand gesture. She threw Hange a helpless look and then departed.

“So,” said Hange into the ensuing silence. Her thoughts were plinking around inside her head, raindrops on glass. Puzzle pieces that fit together but didn’t at the same time. Contradictory statements overlapping. “So. That’s how you knew he was still… pregnant during the expedition.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“And I thought you were…”

“Deluded?”

“… Mistaken,” she corrected. “So, you knew the whole time? About everything?”

“No. I’d guessed, surmised. But I didn’t know everything. And I didn’t know where to look.”

“Was that the real reason you called off the search parties? Because you knew he’d been… taken? That there was foul play?” She _tsked_ when he didn’t answer. “Because you didn’t trust anyone. Because you didn’t trust _me_?”

“I do trust you,” he said quickly. “It was everyone else I didn’t trust. I didn’t know how deep it went.”

“It?”

He sighed again, like he was tired to the very core of himself. “It looks like there’s another conspiracy on our hands, Hange. I need your help to unravel it. Starting with Corporal Swan. And the doctor. They need to be brought in for questioning. Can I entrust you with that?”

She bristled a little at the implication. That _questioning_ was something he’d leave to her. That he knew about it: Sannes and the cellar room, her own crazed laughter, blood and broken nails. That black _meanness_ inside of her, a smoldering fire that was easily stoked to roaring as long as you fed it the right fuel.

Levi knew. He’d seen it. She’d do it for him.

“You can count on me,” she said. Then stood to leave, stiff joints popping. She desperately wanted a bath and a few hours sleep before it all went down.

“Section Commander,” he said, just as she reached the door. “You told me once about the head and the heart. How it’s possible to confuse the two.”

She looked back at him, one hand on the knob.

He said so low it was almost a purr, “I _never_ get them confused.”

Something in his expression made her prickle with cold sweat. “I see,” she said. She resisted the urge to snap her heels together and salute. “It seems I underestimated you… Commander.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!!! Forgive the quality of this chapter, as I'm still TRAUMATIZED by what happened in the latest issue of the manga. I CAN'T EVEN! 
> 
> As always, please please please feedback and let me know what you think!


	4. Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No copyright infringement intended.

“Here you go. It’s hot.” Hange proffered a battered tray; on it was a battered tin cup and a battered tin plate with toast, and she held it in hands with battered knuckles. Levi wondered if everything she owned was slightly bruised.

He mumbled a thanks as she set it down on the bed next to him. He sniffed at the steaming cup and wrinkled his nose, touched the rim of the cup with a fingertip, like he was poking a specimen.

“You used to chew tea leaves,” he mused, watching her plop down on a nearby settee. “For luck, right? I thought it was disgusting, but… hell, I’d kill for some tea leaves to chew on.”

“Herbal tea is just as good,” she said cheerfully.

“The hell it is.”

He took a cautious sip and swallowed slowly, his throat still raw from exposure to smoke and cold. He took a nibble of toast, careful not to cough on the dry crumbs, and then drank more tea. He hated to admit it, but the chamomile and mint mixture soothed his stomach.

“You’re looking at me weird, Four Eyes. It’s creeping me out.”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

“It’s that crazy look you get, like you want to dissect something.”

“That’s my normal look!” she protested. “I look at everything that way.”

He _humphed_ softly. Took another small nibble and another sip, working the bread in his mouth until it was moist enough to swallow. He looked sideways at Hange like the mildly dangerous creature she was, then signed in resignation. “I’m sure you’re dying to ask me a ton of questions about…” He gestured to the full moon that was his belly, prominently round under two layers of fuzzy blankets.

She opened her mouth and he braced himself, but then she launched into an animated, handsy retelling of her latest titan experiments instead.

“… burning didn’t work on hardened titan skin, but I managed to get a small sample of the fumes, exposed it to some lab mice, nothing interesting happened unfortunately, but I guess that’s good since poor Moblit was exposed too…”

He found his lips twisting into a smile. Her voice, husky and annoying, was a relief, the familiarity of it was like scratching an itch.

“… I wanted to treat the material with something caustic, king’s water would have been best but we had no funding for it, can you imagine? I only needed 55, maybe 65 gallons. Erwin could’ve cut back on the food budget this season, it’s for science! So then I-”

“Hange,” he interrupted, feeling a sudden jolt of affection for her. “If this,” he flicked his belly like it was a melon, “turns out to be a girl, I hope she takes after you.”

She flushed a little. “Aw. Well. That’s really sweet of you…”

“Because whenever she misbehaves, I can smack her around extra hard and pretend it’s you. Make up for lost time.”

“Hah. Yeah.” She chuckled a bit, pink and abashed, and then went right back to rambling, moving to slump next to him on the bed at some point, nibbling on his leftovers and leaving crumbs on her shirtfront.

A throat being cleared had them both looking up to see Erwin at the door, looking like he’d been watching them for a while. He nodded at Hange. “A ten-gallon drum of acid just arrived. It’s not as much as you wanted, but it’s all we could get.”

She squealed triumphantly, legs kicking out from their awkwardly curled posture, and made a beeline for the door, already aimed towards her lab. There was a small moment when she passed Erwin at the door, the two of them shoulder to shoulder, a small, tense understanding look passing between them, a miniscule nod of the head. The changing of the guard. Then she was gone, almost skipping, ponytail bouncing down the hall, like a kid on her birthday.

Erwin shut the door firmly behind him before approaching the bed, touching Levi’s shoulder with feather-light fingers. “Are you warm enough?”

“Yes. Don’t fuss.”

Erwin looked at the swell of Levi’s stomach for a minute before he spoke in a cool and measured tone, “We tracked down the last of the cultists two days ago. They’ll be tried before a military tribunal tomorrow.”  

“Oh yeah?” Levi said dully, not really sure how he was supposed to feel. That he was only hearing about the arrest two days after the fact meant that he was _supposed_ to be delicate and faint about it. Maybe he was. Or maybe he was just numb.

It took days to get the story out of him, long hours where he drifted in and out of consciousness, mumbling things that were half-dream and half-reality, him not even sure which. The long months of his confinement felt like time spent underwater, dreamy. Nightmarish and red.

The only thing he could retell with painful clarity was how it happened. The day of the expedition: him bringing up the rear guard, his senses alert for titan enemies, but not for humans. Swan breaking formation and yelling, _Captain!_ in a voice tight with concern, then swinging towards him with hand outstretched as if reaching for him. Him reacting with confusion, swinging on a grapple towards Swan, not really sure what happened until the corporal fired off a concussion round right into him, his gear backfiring, the shock of pain blinding him, his arm thrown protectively over his middle on instinct, the sky whirling blue above him as he fell. A breathless moment of pain when the wire pulled taut and he hung limply, banging into the trunk of a tree. Then the blurred silhouettes of people in maneuvering gear flying towards him to retrieve him, him groping for a blade that he didn’t have strength to lift, already recognizing that these were _not_ Survey Corp, that they weren’t even military, that the gear they had was black market. Falling unconscious.

When he’d woken up underground, it was like realizing he’d been buried alive. He’d _screamed_ , his throat going raw while they bustled around him, sickeningly gentle, patting him and his restraints, saying inane disturbing things: _Hush now, you mustn’t hurt the baby, our Miracle Child._ And that prayer, over and over again: _The sins of the father pass down to the son. Sin casts long shadows. The shadows of sin are long and far. The sins of the father…_

It turned out that the doctor responsible for women’s surgeries in the Corps was deeply enmeshed in the underground cult. For someone who worked all day with blood and skin and fetuses – that slice of the knife, the seductive tickle of the blade on flesh – add a touch of madness and it was easy to see the appeal. All that juicy, dripping red.

He had a prominent position, a gatekeeper of sorts. Women soldiers came to him pregnant, duty-bound to end the lives growing inside of them. But in a military that, despite the mixed quarters, still functioned heavily on machismo, these _feminine matters_ were almost always hushed up. So it was easy to have some of these young mothers disappear. No one bats an eye when soldiers go missing on expeditions. He was free to choose who would be led to slaughter. And when Levi came along, a rarity and a treasure, the doctor didn’t hesitate to choose him and his unborn baby for the next blood sacrifice. The Miracle Child of the Commander himself.

Babies were essential to the cult. All that tender peach skin, those plump doll limbs. Those eyes that had yet to open and see the cruelties of the world. They were spotless, sinless. What better, to put on the sacrificial altar to atone for the sins of mankind? What better food to feed the titans? To feed the evils of the world?

Some of these details, Levi learned later from Erwin, Hange, and sometimes Sasha or Mikasa. They whispered it to him in gentle voices while they bandaged and rebandaged his wounds, their words euphemistic, genteel. The more vulgar parts, he filled in for himself.

“It’s not like I need to be coddled,” he’d snapped at Erwin once. “I’m not fragile.”

“I’m not saying you are, Levi,” Erwin had sighed patiently. “We just don’t want to upset you so close to… your time.”

“Upset me? I _lived_ through it, remember? I crawled my way out of that shithole.”

“We don’t want to upset you any _further_.”

Corporal Swan had fled the barracks the very night Levi had returned. Some others, including the doctor, had gone AWOL as well, thereby implicating themselves. And then the work was to find out how deep that chancre spread in the Survey Corps, how many branches of the cult had grown from that poisoned tree. Now, it seems, the last few were finally found and arrested.

“Are you going to hang them?” Levi asked, watching Erwin watch him.

“They’ll be punished in accordance with the law,” said Erwin. He brushed a stray crumb from Levi’s bedspread and added, “And my satisfaction.”

Levi didn’t look at Erwin’s face. His lover was rarely vengeful, but it was frightening when he was.

In the dark of night, he’d told Erwin the sticky, shameful things he hadn’t told anyone else in the light of day. Pressed together, their breaths moistening the cold night air over the comforter, he’d told Erwin about Old Letch and the touching, about hands sliding his thigh, fingers breaching him, the sickening panting and drooling. Erwin had sat up so fast that Levi had flinched. In the pale moonlight, he could see that his lover’s eyes were burning, that his face was white with rage. Very calmly, icily, he’d asked Levi to repeat the names of the men who’d touched him. Levi had obeyed, recalling the best he could their names and faces, and then felt bad about it. If he’d known Erwin would fly into a rage, albeit a quiet one, he’d have told Hange instead.

“You shouldn’t hang able-bodied soldiers,” Levi ventured.

“Should I show them mercy, then?” asked Erwin, a thrum of thunder in his voice. His eyes flashed icy blue, a warning.

Levi shrugged. “Use them for titan bait or something. I’m just being practical.” But in reality, he was thinking of anointing oil spilled on the ground in shiny streaks, fire flowing slick and fast through the underground passageways, screams cut off short, the inevitable deaths he’d caused. Burning was a bad way to go. No one would blame him, no one had. But he couldn’t help but wonder how many of the so-called cultists were actually murderers. Whether they had been coerced or deluded. The young woman who attended to him the last few months had always seemed frightened and anxious of something. She hadn’t helped him, but she hadn’t harmed him either, not really. He wondered if she was one of the survivors.

“I need to take a piss,” he said abruptly, and started to struggle to his feet.

“I’ll get you the bedpan,” said Erwin, replacing the pillow at his lower back that had fallen over.

“No. I’ll go myself.”

“You shouldn’t be up…”

“I don’t care,” Levi snapped. He had started to sweat, suddenly needing to walk, to be free. He was remembering being tied down so tightly he bled, humiliated by being forced to use a bedpan, being hand-fed like a pet, being gagged. “I don’t care. I just can’t stand it anymore, being in one place.”  

 

X

 

He shouldn’t have allowed it. But Erwin was sweet to him and it felt _good_. After months of fear and slow torture, he _wanted_ to feel good. It was a petulant thought: _I deserve it_.

Erwin, his husband in everything but name, was insistently, anxiously sweet to him in the days that followed. He fussed over Levi’s food and blankets, the way the curtains hung, and the number of inches the window was allowed to be opened. With his single set of knuckles, he massaged and kneaded wherever Levi directed him, leaving him sighing with pleasure, muscles loose and silky. He gave Levi sponge baths and washed his hair in a ceramic basin. He rubbed ointment onto Levi’s belly, palms pressed flat against the sides afterwards, forehead touching the bump of a navel for a long, quiet, moment. Levi once caught him humming a snatch of some lullaby, lips at his belly, when he thought Levi was still napping.  

“What does the baby want to eat today?” he’d ask each morning, and run down to the kitchens if it was something simple (oatmeal, dry toast, baked apples, an egg), or throw on his cloak and ride out if it wasn’t (fennel, pickled fish, fresh greens), or smile wryly if it was impossible (unicorn liver, barbequed dragonfly wings, sugared titan’s brains) and run out anyway for the closest approximation.

He spent a fortune on lemons, just to slice them up and float them in bowls of water, throwing them out when they were mushy and brown, because Levi said the scent calmed him. He brought Levi winter flowers once with the frost still on them, frozen into hard little yellow cups.

In a matter of days, Levi found himself plumped up, his boney limbs filled out and rounded with good feeding and rest, and he found that Erwin had that effect on him: rounding out his edges, making him softer, happier.

Erwin was attentive. Protective. Almost clingy. Ever since Kenny had left him to fend for himself at a tender age, Levi had neither wanted nor needed a protector. But now he reveled in Erwin’s protectiveness. It was luxurious, to have all of that intense, blue-eyed attentiveness focused on him.

Some nights, Levi would wake up to Erwin’s anxious sleep-petting, a lone hand touching his side, his hair, his arm, the jutting baby bump, as if to make sure he was really there.  

They kissed often, lips warm against each other. It felt unimaginably good, like warm sunshine, when Erwin kissed him slow and sweet. They talked about which of them the baby would take after.

It was play-acting, really. On some level, they both knew it. They were both pretending to be what they couldn’t have: a normal, loving family just thrilled to have a baby on the way. Carefree and content. But Erwin was no devoted husband, and Levi was no one’s sweet wife. They were honor-bound to sacrifice each other if duty required it. An offering for the altar.

He never should have allowed it, these few sweet days. He should have been hardening his heart, preparing for the inevitable. But despite himself, he’d been caught up in it, this soothing, decadent lie.

Then, one sunny afternoon, Erwin sat down beside him, took his hand and kissed it. He said, “I found us a doctor for the birth. He’s good. He practices in my hometown. He knew my father.”

“You’re sure he can be trusted?” said Levi.

He always felt an angry clot of fear whenever doctors were mentioned, understandably so. Erwin had alternated between pleading, scolding, guilt-tripping, and bribing before Levi finally agreed to be examined by a military doctor. He had Erwin by the bed, armed and in full uniform, Mikasa scowling in the corner of the room with hands resting on her blade handles, Hange and Moblit posted at the door, and Yeager kicking around in the dirt outside for good measure before he’d let the physician put his hands inside him. He’d have had a pistol aimed at the man’s head during the examination if Erwin had allowed it. The poor doctor had sweated through the whole process, wiped his brow when he was done, and declared shakily that the baby was healthy and was likely due in a week.

“I trust him with my life,” said Erwin, and touched Levi’s stomach. “And with much more.”

“Then I trust him too.”

His hand lingered on Levi’s stomach, feeling the baby kick and smiling softy. “He’s a good man. He’s known me since I was a boy. He has a daughter who’s married to a merchant in Calaneth.”

Levi blinked, not understanding, and Erwin continued, gently prodding, “They don’t have children of their own. They’re well off. I’ve seen where they live, they have a house with a garden. They’re kind people. Generous. Any child would be fortunate to have them as a family-”

“Stop,” said Levi. “Just… stop.”

A tear hit his upper lip. He’d started crying without realizing it. He’d let himself grow soft, content. He’d given in to the beautiful lie, and now it hurt so much more.

“Levi…”

“Don’t say anymore. I can’t bear it.” He wrapped both arms around himself, his hands settling on top of Erwin’s, as if the physical act could hold their child to them.

Erwin looked away, then coughed out something that could have been a dry sob. His face looked haggard, worn. “If… if there was some way… maybe we can keep the child. If the both of us really wanted to…”

“Don’t,” whispered Levi, his tears already drying, turning cold. He touched Erwin’s forehead, then thumped him lightly on the chest where his heart was. “Don’t get them confused.”

Erwin smiled sadly. “I won’t. I can’t.” Then looked away, saying so softy Levi barely heard him, “I hate that I can’t.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks so much for reading!!! Please please please feedback and let me know what you think!


	5. Shadows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi and Erwin's child is born.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please beware of heavy angst ahead! And also spoilers for chapter 84 of the manga... you know what happens.

It was winter, and Levi was carrying his baby across the snow-crusted ground under a cold sun to give her away.

“You didn’t have to come,” he said almost accusingly to Erwin, who was pressed against his side with an arm around his waist.

“Of course I did.” Erwin, who had been looking into the baby’s sleep-scrunched face, flicked his concerned gaze to Levi. “You’re the one who should have stayed behind. You should be resting.”

He probably should be. Whether or not Erwin was only trying to spare his feelings, he could have used the rest. But the thought of limping restlessly back and forth as he waited for Erwin to come back empty-handed, the scent of birth and infant milk still on him, with nothing to do but think about all he’d lost… he couldn’t bear it.

It was a girl. After months of nightmarish imprisonment and a few short, sweet weeks back with Erwin, he’d given screaming birth to a daughter. It had taken a full day, his too-small frame shivering with pain from morning until dark. Hange’s squad and his own took rotations guarding the room, fully armed. Though the cultist had been arrested, they still took every precaution. Sasha Braus, who’d grown up among livestock and had been helping with calving since she’d been old enough to walk, was the only one he’d trusted enough to assist the doctor. She dozed off at one point and he threw a shoe at her.

When the time finally came, the baby moving agonizingly downwards, wriggling to be free, they allowed Erwin to come in to lean against Levi’s arms, restraining him with his full weight. They’d tried tying him to the bedposts with sheets, but he’d snapped them like kindling when he’d strained. It was hard, backbreaking work, and he was reminded of the time he’d strained to lift a dead horse off a fallen comrade, his entire body heaving desperately to save a life. Then, finally, finally, with the lamplight jittering where Sasha held it over his boxy belly, the doctor yelling _Push now! Now!_ and Erwin’s shoulder against his cheek as the Commander supported his back, looking panicky-calm as he also said _Push, Levi_!

And then, the small, creaky wail of new life. A sound like a squeaky door hinge. With Erwin’s help, he looked over the jut of his stomach and saw the doctor wipe at the tiny body, then smile at them both: _It’s a girl_. Then Erwin had shoved a cup of hot brandy tea between his lips, and he fell into sweet oblivion.

“Are you alright?” Erwin asked him, when he slumped against a broad shoulder. Under his overcoat, which was draped over both him and the sleeping child, he was shivering. His body and mind were both sore, tired beyond belief.

Snow had started to fall. Ahead of them on the road, a carriage had stopped. A bearded man in a well-cut suit stepped out first and turned to help his wife dismount. The couple from Calaneth. They came up to him and Erwin with open, friendly faces. The woman had auburn hair and a cinnamon sprinkle of freckles. The man had dark hair and a pointed face. With their looks, the baby might pass for their natural born daughter. Levi noted that their clothes were modest but of good quality.

“Erwin Smith? Levi?” the man said, smiling nervously, one arm extended in a handshake, the other around his wife’s shoulders. She shivered extravagantly, _brr_ , and smiled too, saying, “It’s gotten so cold. Maybe we could sit down somewhere warm and order some tea, maybe invite you to a meal…?”

“No,” Levi said, abrupt to the point of rudeness.

“That won’t be necessary, thank you,” said Erwin.

Levi loosened the oversized coat that actually belonged to Erwin, and let the right panel fall open to reveal the brat. He had his own coat and scarf underneath. The baby was swaddled in blankets with a wool shawl over her, bundled up like a wrapped sausage. Her sleeping face was pink and mashed-looking, topped by a smear of dark hair. _His_ dark hair.

Quiet gasps from the couple. Coos of delight.

“She’s beautiful,” said the mother-to-be. She was young and healthy-looking, and so was her husband. Levi wondered whose deficiency it was that they couldn’t conceive.  

“She’ll want for nothing,” promised the husband. “We’ll love her as if she were our own.”

_You’d better_ , Levi thought but didn’t have the energy to say.

“She _is_ our own,” the woman said dreamily, looking at the child’s tiny face like she was entranced.

Erwin nudged him, and Levi realized that it was time. Time to let go.

He loosened his hold on her and held her out, her new mother already leaning forwards, arms ready to receive her. Leaving the warmth of Levi’s body and the comforting thump of his heartbeat, she roused and started to cry, a thin, creaky wail.

She hung between them for a moment in crying limbo, Levi frozen and devastated, before the woman lurched forward and scooped her up, tucking her securely against her breast, rocking her and murmuring sweet things, _baby girl, sweet girl, my little angel,_ until she quieted.

Something warm and wet trickled down the inside of his leg. The sickly-sweet smell of blood reached him, made him dizzy. He had been bleeding on and off since the birth, his birthing entrance never properly healed. There was a hard fist of pain in his lower stomach. It felt like the blood was being drained directly from his heart.

Under tight bandages, his chest ached, his nipples hard and leaking. He shouldn’t have nursed her. He shouldn’t have bathed her. He should never, never have held her cheek to his own and breathed in her sweet baby smell. Right out of the womb, he should have thrust her directly and uncaringly into a stranger’s arms. Clean break.

Erwin was saying all the words he didn’t care or have the strength to say. He let his head loll against Erwin’s shoulder, his eyes heavy-lidded and blank. “We entrust her to you. Considering our circumstances and positions in the military, you understand why we’re unable to keep her with us. Thank you, for taking her. Our hearts go with her.”

Erwin replaced the coat around Levi, buttoning the front one-handed, trapping inside the musk of blood and birth. Levi heard him gulp audibly, hesitantly, before saying in a controlled rush, “I know I don’t have the right to ask this… she’s yours to raise and educate as you see fit, and it’s your choice whether or not she knows who her real parents are. But… when she is old enough to understand, it’s my heart’s wish that she knows about me and Levi. That we didn’t want to abandon her, but for the good of Humanity, we had to. For honor’s sake, for duty’s sake… well, as I said, it’s your choice.”

The new father nodded solemnly and then sniffled, suddenly sentimental, and encircled both mother and child in his arms. The mother said softly, “When she is older, we’ll tell her about her father.”

_The sins of the father pass down to the son, the sins of the father pass down to the son…_ That prayer from Levi’s nightmares suddenly emerged to haunt him, setting his ears buzzing with blood.  

And then they were turning to go and the urge to say something, to call after them and his daughter one last time, rushed over Levi, hundreds of thoughts clamoring in his head but nothing reaching his mouth, except…

“Don’t let her get cold!” he blurted desperately after them. Because _he_ was cold, shivering, feeling drained of blood. His heart, his eyes, his fingers that had held her little hand, must surely be icing over.

He saw the husband nod distractedly back at him with a reassuring smile, the both of them already fawning over the baby, fixing the swaddling, touching her forehead, a peachy cheek. They mounted the carriage. Levi watched the wooden steps fold inwards, the door thumping shut, then a jangle of metal and they were gone, their tracks in the snow following them like a blood spoor.

_Sin casts long shadows. The shadows of sin are long and far._

And he saw Kenny walking away from him, his long coat trailing like a shadow. He and Erwin both had grown up fatherless, learning how to be men by facing the cruel world alone. And their legacy was abandonment.

“Levi!” Erwin said urgently, and he realized that he had slumped sideways. “I knew you should have stayed back.”

Erwin supported him as they walked back to their coach, Levi wincing with each step.

Jean Kierstein was blowing on his hands when they arrived. He shouldered his rifle and opened the door so Erwin could help Levi inside. He waved and hissed, “Sasha!” and she jumped down from her perch in the trees, bow and arrow in hand, and entered the coach from the other side. The driver, who was another one of Erwin’s trusted people from outside the military, flicked the reins and they rumbled their way home, Jean and Sasha still alert for enemies, Levi sitting curled into himself, hoping no one could smell the blood on him.

Another slither of it came out of him, soaking his trousers, when they arrived back at headquarters. Disgusted with himself, he pushed off Erwin’s helping hand and jumped out of the coach himself, wobbling for a moment when he hit the ground, then stalked dizzily back to their quarters with Erwin at his heels.

He didn’t wait for the door to close before he was ripping off his snow-soaked outer coat, his belt, yanking his boots off and his trousers down. Blood was smeared on his thigh. With a growl of self-loathing, he fumbled for the top drawer of the wooden chest, where he kept rolls of cotton for this purpose. Grabbing a fistful, he flung himself onto the floor, grabbed the back of a knee and spread himself, and jammed a cotton ball forcefully into his still-bleeding birth canal, hissing at the pain, not caring, needing to _hurt,_ to burn.

“Levi!” Erwin was shouting at him. “Stop this.”

He grabbed another roll, shoved it inside him so hard his body shook.

“Stop!” Erwin grabbed his wrist as he was reaching for another, swiveled and pinned his arm across his chest. “Hurt me if you have to. Don’t hurt yourself.”

And like a dam breaking, Levi started sobbing, long deep sobs that left him choking, his tears blinding him and splashing onto the floorboards as he doubled over, bringing Erwin, who was pressed against his back, down with him.

“You wanted me to kill her!” he screamed, his words so garbled they were barely discernable even to his own ears. “And after… after I was _forced_ to have _your baby_ , you made me _give her away!_ ” He lashed out, hitting at nothing, screaming nasty things, “You wouldn’t even hold her! You wouldn’t even look at her, _you coward!_ ”

What he wanted was for Erwin to bite back, to hurt him in return, needing it like he needed to scratch at an inflamed wound, with frenzied fingers and hooked nails, anything to get his skin to quiet down. But Erwin didn’t rise to it, simply took it quietly, saying “Yes, yes” at every one of Levi’s accusations, until he finally ran out of steam and collapsed backwards against Erwin’s chest, still weeping. “Why does it hurt so much?” he whimpered, like a child.

Erwin set him gently against the foot of the bed, then went to wash his hand in a nearby basin, rubbing against a round soap for lather, then rinsing twice. He dried himself on a warm towel and came back to settle in front of Levi’s spread legs, then tenderly, with careful fingers, reached inside Levi and retrieved the viciously wadded-up cotton that was already saturated with blood. He rolled up clean cotton, then inserted it gently, watching for any signs of pain.

“She was the only thing that kept me sane,” Levi whispered brokenly. “While they… pawed at me, kept me tied up like an animal, she kept me alive, gave me a reason to keep fighting. She _protected_ me for nine months. And now, I can’t protect her.”

“You killed for her before she was even born,” said Erwin, and there was finally some fight in his voice. He looked at Levi fiercely, even grabbed his shoulder and shook him a little. “And we _are_ protecting her. We’re protecting her by doing our jobs. We’re fighting for her and all of Humanity.” His eyes were unfocused now, staring past Levi, into a distant horizon, into a world that didn’t exist yet, that only he could see. “And one day, when we’ve finally succeeded and the titans are eradicated, when humans can breathe free air again, only then can we stand in front of her and say without regret: _it’s us, your parents_.”

 

X

 

It was spring, and Levi was carrying Erwin’s bones back to Wall Rose for burial.

“You didn’t have to come,” he said tiredly, looking back at the trio who had followed him: Eren, Mikasa, Armin. They all wore sad, guilty looks, their chins dipping towards their navels.

“We wanted to…” Eren started then trailed off.

“Pay our respects,” Armin finished quietly.

“You could have paid them at the cemetery after I’ve brought him back,” said Levi. He sidestepped them with the burden in his arms, his boots crunching rubble like old bones as he walked away. The bundle of remains in his arms was still vaguely human, but it was no longer Erwin. His brilliant, indomitable, infuriating lover was gone. The Wings of Freedom were wrapped around the desiccated face, the symbol that he’d died for.

The horse-drawn wagon was too wide to fit into the narrow street of houses, where Levi had first laid Erwin to rest, so it was a long walk back, and his mind had time to wander as he picked his way through the ruined cobblestones. He found himself remembering the feel of Erwin’s hand. He found himself wanting to hear Erwin’s voice again, both in full military bellow and in quiet whisper against his ear. He wondered when was the last time they’d made love, and found himself incredibly sad that he couldn’t remember. Then, the guilt. He had let Erwin die. In one blow, he had destroyed two of Erwin’s dreams: to know the secrets of the world, and to stand before his daughter and tell her about it.

He could hear the three of them trailing behind him. He looked over his shoulder, saw faces still round with youth, even though they were soldiers, already scarred by tragedy. Just kids, really.

There was a hard kernel of pain in his lower abdomen, and he had to stop for a moment, slump against a sagging brick wall, and breathe. The birthing pain had never really left him though it had diminished over time. It still haunted him like a ghost. After the birth of his daughter, the doctor reported that the process had shredded his womb. He wouldn’t conceive again, and it would be dangerous to try. Erwin was still alive back then, and had looked somewhat stricken from the news. But Erwin was gone now, and there was no reason to try anyway.

“C-captain?” Armin had sidled up to him nervously, hands held up in some gesture of help, unsure. “Are you alright?”

Levi breathed through his nose and exhaled slowly, felt the pain abate and shrink down to the size of a pinprick. His legs suddenly felt shivery, weak. “Here,” he said, leaning towards them with the bundled body. “You wanted to come. So help me. Take him from me and put him in the wagon.”

Between the three of them, they carried Erwin off, careful and reverent in their movements. Levi walked slowly after them, watched them load their dead Commander onto a blanket, the Yeager boy shrugging off his own winged cloak and laying it on top of the sunken chest.

Levi kissed his fingertips, then touched them to those windswept feathers. “Goodbye, my love.”

The Wings of Freedom felt heavy today. But if that’s what Erwin had died for, then he would see it to the end.

 

X

 

It was autumn, the season of dying, and Levi was carrying wildflowers to Erwin’s grave.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he called out, then looked quickly behind him like he was trying to catch a thief.

A small shape, a flick of blue fabric, ducked out of sight behind a nearby tree. He sighed and continued his way up the hill, knowing without looking that she was scrambling along behind him, mouth-breathing, thinking she was being stealthy.

He knelt at Erwin’s headstone, bowed his head, touched the ground with the palm of his hand. “I hope you’ve been resting well,” he murmured softly. The flowers fell limply from his hands to the ground. “Yeager’s causing trouble overseas. Can you believe that? I’m leaving with the others today. I have to go save his ass, then kick his ass. Wish me luck.” He kissed cold granite, then whispered, “I wish you could have seen the sea.”

He got up to go, had actually walked a good distance away from the military plot before he slowed, then stopped. He chanced a peek over his shoulder.

The girl had unstuck herself from her hiding place, a large angel-shaped memorial statue, and was standing by Erwin’s grave, one of the fallen violets swinging in her hand like a wand. She was rocking a little on her feet, her mouth opening and closing rhythmically, probably in a song or rhyme. Her eyes were large and sad, and she rubbed at them with a fist.

He should leave. He wanted to leave. But again, like seeing a ghost, he pictured the trailing back of Kenny’s coat as he walked away.

_The sins of the father pass down to the son…_

_Your mother should have listened to me and aborted you_ , Kenny slurred at him in his memory.  

_Make an appointment with the surgeon first thing tomorrow_ , Erwin’s ghost whispered at him.

Sin _did_ cast long shadows. There was a reason thugs raised more thugs, it didn’t matter if it was in the Underground or in the Interior. Bullies and abusers were smacked around as kids, then gave birth to more of the same.

_The shadows of sin are long and far._

But Old Letch, idiot that he was, had never really finished that prayer. Levi had looked it up one sleepless night, ears burning with half-remembered words, and found the rest of the verse by candlelight: _It is the father’s burden to bear the sin, so the son may walk free_.

Without even realizing it, his feet had carried him back to the tombstone, back to the child. She turned to look up at him with those mournful eyes. Erwin’s eyes. Her face was round but pointed at the chin, like an upside-down teardrop. She had dark hair cut neatly into a bob, with thick bangs. But she was still a child, her looks were changeable. She could stay this way with minimal change, elfin like Levi. Or her face could shift into something stronger and more angular, her cheekbones popping, her nose lifting, until she looked more like…

It hurt to think of it.

“Where are you parents?” he asked.

She stared at him, somber and wide-eyed, and said in a piping voice, “I know who you are.” She pointed a skinny finger at him. “You’re my real parents, right?”

Her dress was blue, so dark it was nearly black. He felt unreasonably resentful at that. Let the kid wear yellow, green, apple red, sizzling pink. She was supposed to be removed from death and tragedy. Don’t put her in mourning colors.

She was skinny and short for her age, but he knew it wasn’t from lack of feeding. Malnutrition was the reason _he_ was short, it would never touch her. He knew, because he insisted, through correspondence with her parents, that he foot some of her food bill. The brat ate like a king.

He went down on one knee so he could get a good look at her. “What’s your name?”

“Lara.”

He knew, but he wanted to hear her say it. Wanted to hear her little bird voice say it with confidence, announcing who she was to a titan-free world.

“I’m Levi, Lara.”

She nodded. Sucked on her lower lip. “I know that. I heard all about you. And the Cur-man-der.” She traced Erwin’s name with a shell-pink fingernail, then said resolutely, “I wanna be like you.”

His eyes watered. Like him? His world was death and bereavement, the tension of steel wire and the smell of gunpowder, the scratch and scramble for survival and the crushing cruelties of men. But… there was some good there too, little bits of heaven in the midst of hell. Loyalty. Comradery. The sweet pain of love. _Erwin_. That distant horizon.

He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, surprising himself with how easily the motion came to him. It was the first time he’d touched her since she left his arms as a baby.

“My Hope,” he said, then stopped himself. Erwin had warned him not to name her as she came out of his womb. Hell, he’d warned _himself_ not to do it. To name her would have been to acknowledge her, to possess her, to _want_ her. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. As he labored and struggled and bled for her, and yes, _loved_ her, he’d felt a name bubble to the surface like a little gasp of joy. A murmur of peace and happiness in his heart, even in the midst of danger.

He cleared his throat, shook his head to clear it. “My hope,” he said, “is for you to grow up happy and healthy. Make friends. Play. Grow. Love your parents, the ones you have at home. Learn about this world we live in. Learn about… _him_.” He said it with an old pain in his heart, and they both turned dark heads to look at the gray slab that reminded the world that Erwin Smith had lived. “Learn about everything. Wait until you’re older, and you understand. And then, if you still want to be like me… come find me. I’ll always be waiting, either here…” he touched the ground, and hoped it wasn’t an omen, “or out there.”

He didn’t expect her to understand. Not truly. Not yet. But he was content when she nodded at him, her eyes big and blue. Erwin’s eyes. Then, unexpectedly, she surged forward and hugged him hard. He was motionless for a moment, stunned, her bony body poking him in a dozen places, her breath huffing against his neck. Then, slowly, he brought his arms up and hugged her back, feeling the thud of her little heart, like a bird’s heart, the little bird that Isabel once brought home, nursing it so it could fly out of the Underground and into the free sky.

_Fly, my little bird. My Hope, I want you to soar._

She was sniffling a little when she pulled back. He wiped her nose with a clean handkerchief. Chucked her under the chin. “Run along now. You’ll be late for supper.”

He watched her skip down the hill, her head bobbing like a dark mushroom cap. A hassled-looking, spectacled woman met her at the gate, grabbing her and dusting her off with two smacks to the bottom. A governess maybe. So Lara was a little truant. He smiled and decided he liked her.  

“Levi.” Hange appeared at his elbow. Her eyepatched face was somber and her nose was pink. She had probably just come from visiting Moblit’s grave at the military plot. They all had their little pre-mission rituals. She nodded at him. “It’s time.”

He followed her down the hill, throwing the Wings of Freedom around his shoulders once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shout-out to [Eien_Ni](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eien_Ni/pseuds/Eien_Ni)'s lovely story: [Her Name Was Hope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7965475)! Their daughter's legal name is Lara (because Tomb Raider is awesome) but Levi secretly named her Hope when she was born.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading this story! I really hope you liked it, as it was a passion project of mine. Please, as always, drop some feedback and let me know what you think!!!


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